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Sugar CRM Leads

Sugar CRM Leads Module Conclusions – fast link.

What are leads in SugarCRM ? It is worth using them?

These are the questions that I will try to answer now.

In the sale process, leads are the early contacts. For example, a lead may be generated by a phone call, a partner, word of mouth, trade shows, or other sources.

All leads have a life cycle and they can be managed and tracked with Leads module of Sugar CRM.

A lead may be duplicated (if you have more leads from the same source) or converted in opportunities, account, contacts and even appointments.

In the leads module home page, you will see a quick search and a lead list (that can be exported in CSV format) with columns like Name, Status, Account Name, E-mail, Phone Number and User (the user is you or other team members).

Clicking on any lead will display detailed information of that lead.

Information that can be added in a Sugar CRM lead

A lead can contain the following information (default with Sugar CRM open source). The ones I consider important, are in bold. (but I repeat, depends on the business type of your company).

There are three main categories:

• Lead Information
• Address Information
• Description Information

Lead information:

• Lead source (cold call, exiting customer, trade shows etc)
• Lead source description
• Status (new, assigned, in process, converted, recycled, dead)
• Referred by
• First Name
• Last Name (mandatory field)
• Account Name
• Title
• Phones – office, mobile, home, etc
• E-mail
• Department
• Do not call
• Assigned to

Address Information:

• primary address and secondary
• city, state, postal code, country

These are the usual fields, in my opinion they are enough. For a fast, flexible and small company I will use just:

• Lead source
• Status with New, Dead – the others values of status field I will eliminate, because they are no needed I’ll keep the converted-status field, which is automatically assigned when a lead is converted
• Contact Information (address, e-mails)
• Description

I like to keep it simple.

These fields can be customized from the admin menu and if the admin custom module isn’t doing a good job for you, a good coder (programmer) can provide you with all the fields you need, with the right associations.

In conclusion: Leads are the starting point of an income (a new business, orders and so on). Leads are the early contacts, and they have a source – a phone call, a website, e-mail, partner etc. The leads may come from the exterior or can be generated by us (and let’s not forget that we should generate them). Sugar CRM Leads Module can be used to manage and track the life-cycle of these the leads. It is a module that will help your work flow and it will help you keep organized.

For a feeling of this module please click here, and play with Sugar CRM Leads Module.

Tags: sugar crm, leads, sugar crm leads, leads module, crm tutorial